Read about my adventure in building replica droids from the Star Wars Saga.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Eek! It Talked!

Last week I accomplished four things. First, I installed the hardware needed to mount the center ankle and drilled the mounting holes through the center ankle. The ankle will be held between two L shaped steel rails by two 5/16ths bolts. But I goofed a little when setting the rails. they are 1/4" to wide on each side. I will have to make a couple of 1/4" spacers to fit between the rails and the center ankle.

Second, I routed the spot where the speakers will mount. I left a 1/8" lip all the way around the hole to rest the speaker on. I then soldered new wire onto the speakers.

Third, I cut out the replacement shoulder flange cover.

Now for the big one. I finally decided to mount my electronic hardware to the PCB tray I made and start wiring then together.

At this point everything except the power and speed controllers are wired together. Actually, the only other thing on the board is the sound and R/C circuits. Since the sound hardware was ready, I started studying how to program the Arduino. Amazingly I was able to figure it out in only 3 days using examples and tips from other droid builders and the Arduino community. So now in the end, when I push a single button on my PS2 controller, R6 will play a random sound. Of course I made a video.

Currently there are only 10 different R2 sounds stored, but I have many more I can add. Just need to select the ones I want to use and convert them to MP3's.